Worm On Road

 The fire does not leave his skin. Even after the ash is wiped clean, the sigils remain — faintly glowing, whispering when no one else speaks. Aren tries to forget what he saw during the Rite. But forgetting doesn’t come so easily anymore. The Ashen Flame cheers him now. They call him “Brother Burned.” Some bow. Others avoid his eyes. But in the still moments — when he closes his fists, or breathes too deeply — he hears the scream again. And sometimes… a child’s laughter, far away. Three nights pass. Then, one night, he wakes in his tent. But the tent is gone. So is the sky. So is the world. He’s in The Hollow. Again. The trees are shadows of trees. The ground is neither ash nor frost — but something soft, familiar, wrong. It smells like his childhood. And in the center of it all sits the Hollow Child — mask cracked wider now, hair damp from rain that doesn’t fall. He hums a lullaby Aren knows. One his mother sang. One he’d buried years ago. “You’re back...

The border is marked not by a wall, but by a change in the air . Frost gives way to heat. The snow no longer falls — it hisses as it vanishes. The trees are blackened skeletons, roots charred into fists. And standing at the edge of this cracked earth is a woman in armor the color of dried blood. “Welcome to the end of silence,” she says. “You must be the Seer’s prize.” Maelora . Warlord of the Ashen Flame. Crowned in scorched iron and bearing a jagged blade that breathes. They take Aren in chains. Not to a cell — but to a throne room made of bone and ember. Here, fire dances along the walls like it’s alive. And the people cheer. Not for war. For him. “He’s the Vessel!” they cry. “The fire answers him!” Aren does not understand. He is unarmed. Uncertain. And yet — the flames curl toward him. Not to burn, but to greet. Later, Maelora brings him to a courtyard of coals. She speaks plainly. “You’ve been walking through frost too long, boy. All that silen...

 They send him east. Not to fight. Not yet. “You must see what was lost,” the Seer says, “before you can destroy it.” And so Aren walks, escorted by four silent guards down a narrow road made of bone-white stone, across a landscape of dying frost. The snow here no longer falls. It just hovers — suspended mid-air, like breath never exhaled. The road is called The Ember Path . But there is no fire here. Not yet. At first, Aren stays quiet. He watches the guards — all wearing expressionless silver masks, faces turned inward. They do not speak. They do not look back. Their swords are sheathed in glass. At a bend in the road, he sees a tree made entirely of ice. Beneath it, a frozen bird sits in mid-song, beak open but soundless. He stops. None of the guards do. He touches the bird. Its head turns. And it screams. They camp near a forgotten shrine. It is shaped like a house — small, wooden, blackened with old flame. There’s no roof, just broken beams and ash-stained f...

  The Silver Veil is quiet. Too quiet for a kingdom at war. Snow falls like dust across a city of glass spires. Bells do not ring. No birdsong. No footsteps. Only the faint hum of stillness — as if the world is holding its breath. Aren wakes in a room with no doors. Walls of white stone. A bed with no sheets. A mirror that does not reflect. His breath clouds the air. He sits up, fingers aching from cold, and finds silver markings scorched into his wrist — symbols he doesn't remember earning. A voice speaks behind him. “You’ve crossed the Hollow. You are chosen now.” Aren turns. A figure stands in the frostlight — robed in flowing grey, a face hidden behind a veil of ice-laced silk. The Seer. The one they said speaks for the Veil itself. “We brought you from the edge of flame,” the Seer says, hands folded. “Your body was broken. But your mind...” “Is still broken,” Aren finishes, unsure why the words come so easily. The Seer tilts their head. “You remember?” Aren...

  There is a war. You don’t remember why it started. But you wake to its echo every time you close your eyes. The sky is stitched with cracks. The ground flickers — charred wood, marble, blood. Aren wakes, trembling. He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know who he is. Ashen crows drop feathers whispering his name: “Aren.” “Aren.” But that’s not his name anymore. A child waits in the Hollow. Masked. Still. Watching. “You burned them,” the child says. “No, I was trying to—” “You always say that.” Drums. Flags. War is coming from both sides. Because he is the war. He always was. Read chapter 1 here

The cathedral was burning again. It always did, in the end. Ash fell like snow on the fractured altar. The stained glass saints bled fire. And where the great crucifix once stood, there was only silence — and the soft breathing of something waiting to be named. A man moved through the rubble. His coat was torn. His eyes burned with something colder than grief. He passed over pews arranged like coffins. Over holy books too wet to burn. He stopped at the altar — the source of it all — where the Speculum Dei pulsed in a bed of cracked stone. And across from him stood a figure. Not a demon. Not a god. A man. Or what was left of one. He was taller now. Half-covered in metal. His face was a ruin of burns and bone, held together by force of will and something far older. One arm gleamed silver. The other was wrapped in black cloth and blood. His voice, when it came, was soft. Too soft. “You came back.” The man did not reply. “You always do. Always thinking this time will be d...